Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI served as Pope of the Catholic Church from 2005 until his resignation in 2013. Benedict was elected on 19 April 2005 in a papal conclave following the death of Pope John Paul II and was inaugurated on 24 April 2005. Ordained as a priest in 1951 in his native Bavaria, Ratzinger established himself as a highly regarded university theologian by the late 1950s and was appointed a full professor in 1958. After a long career as an academic and professor of theology at several German universities, he was appointed Archbishop of Munich and Freising and cardinal by Pope Paul VI in 1977, an unusual promotion for someone with little pastoral experience. In 1981, he settled in Rome when he became Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, one of the most important dicasteries of the Roman Curia. From 2002 until his election as pope, he was also Dean of the College of Cardinals, and as such, the primus inter pares among the cardinals.

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